Two women who claimed Johnson & Johnson talcum powder caused their ovarian cancer were given a $40 million award by a Los Angeles jury on Friday.
The massive healthcare organization declared that it would challenge the jury’s findings on liability and compensatory damages.
The decision is the most recent in a protracted legal dispute over allegations that talc in Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower body powder was linked to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, an illness that affects the lungs and other organs.
In 2023, Johnson & Johnson discontinued selling talc-based powder globally.
A different California jury in October ordered J&J to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who died of mesothelioma. The lady’s family claimed that the baby powder she used was tainted with asbestos, a carcinogen.
In the most recent case, the jury gave Deborah Schultz and her husband $22 million and Monica Kent $18 million.
According to their lawyer, Daniel Robinson of the Robinson Calcagnie law office in Newport Beach, California, “the only thing they did was be loyal to Johnson & Johnson as a customer for only 50 years.” “That allegiance was a one-way street.”
In a statement, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, Erik Haas, said that the company had won “16 of the 17 ovarian cancer cases it previously tried” and anticipated doing so once more after appealing Friday’s decision.
The jury’s conclusions, according to Haas, are “irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming that talc is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.”
In 2020, Johnson & Johnson replaced the talc in its baby powder, which was distributed in much of North America, with cornflour due to a drop in sales.
J&J’s proposal to pay $9 billion to resolve ovarian cancer and other gynecological cancer litigation claims based on talc-related goods was rejected by a U.S. bankruptcy court judge in April.
